Judging solely by the comments in the last few weeks, it seems like you thought the letter K wasn’t quite as killer as some other letters of the alphabet. I mean, if Chris X can’t find anything worth talking about two weeks in a row, I know I have some problems. But hey, that’s the way the letter bounces, or something like that. A quick glance at the 12th letter of the alphabet shows four weeks’ worth of songs to pick back up where K ran Bottom Feeders into the ground.
And hey, did you notice the number of this post? Fifty-two! That means one full year of Bottom Feeders! Now, if you want to get technical and point out that I reached my first anniversary at Popdose at the beginning of April (the site’s December “furlough,” a 2008 recap, and a week off prevented me from reaching #52 sooner), you could — but why take away from my fun?
Why is this such a big deal to me? After all, most of the writers contribute much more than I do and, frankly, know way more about music than I do. But see, here’s the thing — unbeknownst to our loving editor-in-chief, Jeff, I start projects like this all the time, get six weeks in, and run out of steam. I always think I’m going to enjoy talking about my passion, but then I realize I don’t have the time or the energy to keep going.
But there are two things that are totally different this time. The first is that you actually comment! That’s a big driving factor, of course. But the real reason I think I’ve been able to not just hold on but enjoy this so much is that it’s a fucking cool thing, isn’t it?
I mean, who the hell does this shit? What sane person says, “Sure, I’ll take two and a half years out of my life to write about the ass end of one of the worst decades of music in history”? Everyone talks about “Welcome to the Jungle,” but no one mentions Lorenzo Lamas’s music career, and for good reason. But everyone needs a purpose, right?
God, I hope this isn’t my only purpose in this world.
Anyway, off my ego-trippin’ soapbox I go, but first a big thanks to those reading and/or commenting who’ve kept me motivated. Now, on to the letter L, as we check out the songs that charted no higher than #41 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the 1980s.
Leonard Cohen has been referencing his own mortality in his lyrics for decades now, and on his current world tour the first such hint arrives about a half hour into the show. Near the end of his 1988 classic “Everybody Knows,” he sings, “Everybody knows it’s coming apart / Take one last look at this sacred heart / Before it blows…” One couldn’t help but sense that Cohen’s mortality – he’s 74, after all – was part of what packed the house on two consecutive nights this weekend at Los Angeles’ Nokia Theatre. It was, perhaps, our last opportunity to watch pop music’s most poetic singer/songwriter do his thing, and we treated the occasion with all the reverence it demanded.
His humor, like his set list, is well-rehearsed — he’s been using that line for nearly a year now, and the order of songs performed at his L.A. concerts was nearly identical to the track listing on the recently released 